DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. FIRST TRANSITION PERIOD. CHAPTER I. FEATURES. The fact that 'constitutions are not made, but grow,' is simply a fragment of the much larger fact, that under all its aspects and through all its ramifications, Society is a growth and not a manufacture.-Herbert Spencer. Politics. To the love of liberty succeeded the rage of faction. Ministry after ministry failed — the legal, the corrupt, and the national. The king aimed only to emancipate himself from control, and to gratify his private tastes. Ignorant of affairs and averse to toil, without faith in human virtue, believing that every person was to be bought, promising everything to everybody, and addicted beyond measure to sensual indulgence,- he brought the state by maladministration to the brink of ruin. Retribution was speedy. The defeated Roundheads, passing below the surface, began to reappear; and renouncing their republicanism as impracticable, took up the watchword of constitutional reform. After fifteen years of dissolute revels, Charles was succeeded by his brother James II, who wished to achieve, at the same time, a triumph for pure monarchy and for Romanism. Again, as at the outbreak of the Civil War, there was a political struggle and a religious struggle, and both were directed against the government. The reaction which had prostrated the Whigs was fol 1 Mackintosh. lowed by one far more violent in the opposite direction; and the revolution of eighty-eight, which enthroned William of Orange, brought the grand conflict of the seventeenth century to a final issue-not in the establishment of a wild democracy, but in the transfer of executive supremacy from the Crown to the House of Commons. The ministers, who were chosen henceforth from the majority of its members, became its natural leaders, capable of being easily set aside and replaced whenever the balance of power shifted from one side of the House to the other.' Society. In the eternal whirl of change, heads were made giddy. Laxity of principle in statesmen became too common to be scandalous. Austerity, too, necessarily produced revulsion. Profligacy became a test of loyalty, and a qualification for office. Devotion and honesty were swept away, and a deep general taint spread through every province of letters. In court circles, it was the fashion to swear, to relate obscene stories, to get drunk, to gamble, to deride Scripture and the preachers. Two nobles, nearly nude, run through the streets after midnight. Another, in open day, stark-naked, harangues a mob from an open window. Another writes poems for the haunts of vice. A duke, blind and eighty, goes to a gambling-house with an attendant to tell him. the cards. Charles quarrels with his mistress in public, she calling him an idiot, he calling her a jade. Men and women appear alike depraved. Lords and ladies in festivities smear one another's faces with candle-grease and soot, 'till most of us were like devils.' A duchess disguises herself as an orange-girl, and cries her wares in the street. Another loses in one night twentyfive thousand pounds at play. Says a contemporary: Here I first understood by their talk the meaning of company that lately were called Ballers; Harris telling how it was by a meeting of some young blades, where he was among them, and my Lady Bennet and her ladies, and their dancing naked, and all the roguish things in the world." All this without an attempt to throw even the thinnest veil over the evil everywhere rampant. The regular and decent exterior maintained easily at Versailles, was here troublesome. 1 Thus terminated in England the contest which even now is raging in Germany. Within a few days of the present writing, Emperor William has asserted his right to dictate the policy of the Prussian government, without regard to the Ministry or the Parliament. A crisis is imminent. Perhaps the time has come for Germany to strike the blow that shall free her from military absolutism. Wise is the ruler who is in sympathy with the prevailing tendency, which, over all Europe, is liberal. The tyrant may disturb or retard, but the industrial organization, in its general course, is beyond his control. They have, moreover, the violent instincts of barbarians. The republicans were tried with a shamelessness of cruelty. By the side of one was stationed a hangman, in a black dress, with a rope in his hand. While one was being quartered, another was brought up and asked if the work pleased him. Hearts, still beating, were torn out and shown to the people. A speaker in the Commons gives offence to the court, is waylaid by a gang of bullies, and his nose slit to the bone. Bunyan has satirized the mode of conducting state trials mere forms preliminary to hanging and drawing. Hategood is counsel for the prisoner: Judge. Thon runagate, heretic, and traitor, hast thou heard what these honest gentlemen have witnessed against thee? Faithful. May I speak a few words in my own defence? Judge. Sirrah, Sirrah! thou deservest to live no longer, but to be slain immediately upon the place; yet, that all men may see our gentleness to thee, let us hear what thou, vile runagate, hast to say.' After the rising of Monmouth, gentlemen were admonished to be careful of their ways, by hanging to their park gate the corpse of a rebel. Dynasties of gentry, known by the dreaded names of Hectors, Scourers, Mohawks, were the terror of peaceable citizens. The moral condition at large is fearfully expressed in the fact that in guide-books of the period gibbets and gallows are referred to as road-marks. For example: By the gallows and three wind-mills enter the suburbs of York.' Leaving the forementioned suburbs (Durham), a small ascent, passing between the gallows and Crokehill.' You pass through Hare street . . . with a gallows to the left." ... You pass by Pen-menis Hall, and ascend a small hill with a gibbet on the right.' At 2-3, leaving the acute way on the right to Towling, Ewel, etc., just at the gallows, or place of execution of malefactors, convicted at Southwark. At 85 you pass by a gallows on the left.'. . . A small rill with a bridge over it called Felbridge, separating it from Surrey, whence by the gallows you are conveyed to East Grinsted.' Leaving Petersborough you pass the gallows on the left.' You leave Frampton, Wilberton, and Sherbeck, all on the right, and by a gibbet on the left, over a stone bridge.' 'Leaving Nottingham you ascend an hill, and pass by a gellows." 'From Bristol . . . you go up a steep ascent, leaving the gallows on your right.' 'You cross the River Saint, leaving the gallows on your left.'1 We must not, however, exaggerate the extent of this reaction. Its more violent forms appear to have been confined to the capi 1 Ogilby's Itinerarium Angliæ. tal and the Court. When the frenzy of the Restoration had passed, it was seen that the best portions of the Puritan spirit were never extinguished. The mass of Englishmen, satisfied with getting back their May-poles and mince pies, were essentially unchanged. Perhaps nothing shows the social state more strikingly than the provisions for locomotion. Often the highway was but a narrow track rising above the quagmire, and that not infrequently blocked up by carriers, neither of whom would yield. In the dusk, it was hardly distinguishable from the open heath and fen on either side. Wheeled carriages were in some districts generally pulled by oxen. On main roads, heavy articles were commonly conveyed, at enormous expense, by stage-wagons, in the straw of which nestled a crowd of passengers who could not afford to travel by coach; on by-roads, by long trains of pack horses. The rich travelled in their own carriages, with from four to six horses. Nor could even six always save the vehicle from being imbedded. Towards the close of the century, Flying Coaches' were established a great and daring innovation. Moving at the rate of thirty to fifty miles a day, many thought it a tempting of Providence to go in them. This spirited undertaking was vehemently applauded-and as vehemently decried. About 1676, a few railways, made of timber, began to appear in the northern coal districts. Wagons were the cars, and horses the engines. But however a journey might be performed, travellers, unless numerous and well-armed, were liable to be stopped and plundered by marauders, many of whom had the manners and appearance of aristocrats. Innumerable inns-for which, since the days of famous Tabard, England had been renowned — gave the wanderer a cheering welcome from the fatigues of travel and the dangers of darkness. Houses were not numbered. Shops were distinguished by pictorial signs, for the direction of the common people who were unable to read. The streets of the metropolis are thus described: The particular style of building in old London was for one story to project over another, with heavy beams and cornices, the streets being paved with pebble stones, and no path for foot passengers but what was common for carriages, scarce a lamp to be seen, and except a few principal streets, they were in general very narrow, and those encumbered with heavy projecting signs, and barber's poles. London must have had a |